How to recognize and treat “long covid”? The High Authority of Health (HAS) publishes on February 12 the first management recommendations for people with prolonged symptoms after covid-19. She suggests an approach “personalized“coordinated by the attending physician and”Central place“for rehabilitation, especially respiratory.

10% of patients at six months

These symptoms can occur “even in people who have had mild forms“from disease. They are diverse and”can evolve in a fluctuating way“, underlines the HAS.

The authority defines these patients with “prolonged symptoms“such as patients with confirmed or probable covid who still have at least one initial symptom four weeks later and whose symptoms cannot be explained by another diagnosis.

And these are not isolated cases since according to preliminary estimates, “more than half of patients“could be affected four weeks after the onset of the disease and”more than 10%“at six months.

Read also: The plight of patients with “long covid”

Fatigue, cough, neurological disorders …

What are the symptoms? “The most frequently encountered symptoms are fatigue, neurological disorders“(cognitive, sensory or headaches),”chest pain and tightness“, cough, difficulty breathing, heart rhythm disturbances, smell and taste, details the HAS.

Young and allergic women

“We wanted to react quickly because the HAS realized that the patients were really wandering about the diagnosis and that the doctors needed to be equipped to take care of them.“, explained during an online press conference the infectious disease specialist Dominique Salmon, president of the working group which developed this advice.

It’s about “especially women of young age (…) and often allergic“, she added, on the basis of the patients of the cohort formed at the Hôtel-Dieu hospital (AP-HP) in Paris. This particularity evokes hormonal or immune tracks to explain these persistent syndromes.

Focus on rehabilitation

How to treat these patients? “In addition to appropriate symptomatic treatments, rehabilitation is an important aspect in the management of patients with prolonged symptoms.“, says the document.

It can be “respiratory rehabilitation in case of hyperventilation syndrome“, of”olfactory rehabilitation in case of persistent odor disorders“or even”gradual and adapted exercise re-training (…)“.

Finally, HAS recommends funding “research work” To answer to the “many scientific questions“that persist on these symptoms and how to treat them.